


The Most Dangerous Courtship

by EyesoftheDevilsWater



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: M/M, TBA - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-01
Updated: 2021-03-01
Packaged: 2021-03-13 05:49:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,409
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29771601
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EyesoftheDevilsWater/pseuds/EyesoftheDevilsWater
Summary: What every fan girl wishes they would’ve added to the already tense series: Hannibal and Will more forth coming about intimacy with one another.
Relationships: Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter
Kudos: 3





	The Most Dangerous Courtship

_“_ _A Georgia rain just kissed my lips. I live, I live for moments like this. Steady the rein, girl, I know you won't miss. I wish that you would aim for the blood of my heart, yeah…”_

“Tell me then, how many confessions?” Dr. Hannibal Lecter quizzed, a mask of professional curiosity drawn across his face.

“Twelve dozen last time I checked,” Agent Jack Crawford responded, hands on his hips as they both stared down the board of victims, details, and map of where they were found. “None of them had any details… until this morning. And then they all had details. Some genius in Duluth PD took a photograph of Elise Nichols’ body with his cell phone, shared it with his friends, and then Freddie Lounds posted it on tattlecrime.com.”

Newly dubbed ‘FBI Profiler’ Will Graham finally spoke up with a huffed, “Tasteless.”

This is how it all started. A Lithuanian man with the body of a god and the soul of a wendigo- that is to say appearingly soulless overall- stepped in when Jack Crawford determined that maybe Dr. Alana Bloom had a point about Will’s mental state and drive. The intent was a second opinion in the beginning, but there was something Jack saw as the two interacted that cemented the idea that Will Graham and Hannibal Lecter were bound by fate to entwine in some way. At the time, Jack simply believed that Dr. Bloom had not only given him a source of second opinion, but had given him an anti-catalyst for his delicate, spectrum- burdened consultant. Never could they have guessed what twisted path this entwining would bring about.

“Do you have trouble with taste?” Hannibal spoke up, tamping down the twitch to quirk an eyebrow in fascinated curiosity. He was here to read others, not allow them to read him, but he was in fact taken a bit by surprise at the man’s disgusted comment.

Will suddenly regretted his decision to speak up and sighed before responding, “My thoughts are often not tasty.”

“Nor mine. No effective barriers,” Hannibal added, concurring with Will’s statement while making sure to return his focus to the board beside him so as not to draw attention to his interests.

“I build forts,” Will countered in an attempt to avoid allowing this stranger to make connections between them. There was something radiating from the man that was indiscernible and set off flags in Will’s brain to cut ties to the lasso that was being thrown around him by the curiously cold psychiatrist. He suspected the coldness was not a result of professional façade, but rather a distancing of the newcomer- though to what end was not something Will was able to infer yet.

“Associations come quickly,” Hannibal negated, moving to take a seat next to the curly haired brunette man that had piqued his curiosity and interest in so few words.

“So do forts,” Will shot back, avoiding eye contact with ‘the good doctor’ in favor of focusing on his caffeine intake.

Ever the one for pristine manners, Hannibal took note of the avoidance and catalogued it away as he commented, “Not fond of eye contact, are you?”

Will could feel Hannibal’s eyes turn to him as he brushed off the potential jab with, “Eyes are distracting. You see too much, you don’t see enough....” He found himself compelled- the same way a chastised child felt as if they had to look at their lecturing parent- to turn his gaze towards Hannibal as he stammered, “And- and it’s hard to focus when you’re thinking, um, ‘oh those whites are really white,’ or ‘he must have hepatitis,’ or ‘oh, is that a burst vein?’”

Hannibal couldn’t help the amused, muted chuckle at Will’s honest take on eye contact. Even more so when he realized that the brunette seemed to be having difficulty tearing his gaze away once it fell upon him. _Taken back by something he’s gleaned from me thus far,_ Hannibal noted as he continued to take in details of the bookish ‘lone wolf’ before him. Those unkempt curls were something else, but not nearly as striking as the eyes that came at him with scalpel at the ready- the profiler was already attempting to assess the good doctor and quite flustered that getting a read on Hannibal was much more difficult than being dissected by Hannibal.

“So, yeah, I try to avoid eyes whenever possible,” Will concluded with a pointed pull of his gaze away from Hannibal’s viably exotic features and back to the files before him. “Jack?”

“Yes?” Jack responded, realizing he was being pulled back into conversation as he returned to his seat at his desk. 

“I imagine what you see and learn touches everything else in your mind,” Hannibal diverted back to his study of the still unclassified man before him. “Your values and decency are present yet shocked at your associations, appalled at your dreams. No forts in the bone arena of your skull for the things you love.”

Will found himself staring down Hannibal in anxious discomfort at the strange man’s words with a look of agitation and unease, “Whose profile are you working on?” Will felt his voice collapse in on itself as his anxiety wrapped around his chest and neck like a python fighting to do in its prey once and for all. “Whose profile is he working on?!”

Realizing his casual observation had gone into thorough dissection and was highly unwelcome to the empath beside him, Hannibal resituated his expensive, well-tailored suit and replied, “I’m sorry, Will. Observing is what we do. I can’t shut mine off anymore than you can shut yours off.”

“Please don’t psychoanalyze me,” Will gritted out, giving the Men’s Warehouse model a sideways glare as he struggled to compose his anger and annoyance at the events taking place. 

_Not unlike a petulant child being called out on his behaviors by his parents in public,_ Hannibal thought to himself. _It’s almost endearing in a way._

“You won’t like me when I’m psychoanalyzed,” Will vaguely threatened, trying even harder to avoid eye contact since the thought of laying eyes upon Dr. Lecter could further ignite his anger.

“Will,” Jack sternly spoke up, already over the petty agitation.

“Now, if you’ll excuse me,” Will snapped, rising from his seat and collecting his things. “I have to go give a lecture on psychoanalyzing.”

“Maybe we shouldn’t poke him like that, Doctor,” Jack roundabout scolded, feeling a headache threatening to set in after the previous exchange as his office door closed. “Perhaps a less, uh, direct approach.”

“What he has is pure empathy,” Hannibal presented, sitting forth as if it were a very serious and secretive diagnosis. “He can assume your point of view, or mine, and maybe some other points of view that scare him. It’s an uncomfortable gift, Jack.”

_“_ _And you know what you're doing, You know that it hurts The worst, but I stand through the pain of it all. I'll follow you down to the edge of this earth, earth, earth…”_

Hannibal couldn’t help the subtle spike of sympathy that arose with the thought of what it must be like for that poor boy to be forced to relive the nightmares he is brought in to dissect and explain. Fragile was the first adjective that Hannibal found himself attributing to the man. Rightfully so as it seemed he not only had the vivid imagination one would expect from a child, but the sensitivity of one as well. It was very telling to the doctor that Will had explicitly and vividly described his defenses as ‘forts’- which brought the amusing and sad thought that, given the previous interaction, Will’s supposed forts were likely made of pillows, not unlike a child’s and just as easily demolished. He could already tell that Will was on edge from what he’d seen in person thus far. Hannibal found himself quite hyperfocused on the fascinating subject of Will Graham- a delicate yet feisty crusader of truth and justice. If there was one thing Hannibal prided himself on aside from his aesthetics and manners, it was his honesty. He had yet to tell a lie and found that carefully worded truth would always get him much further than a bold-faced lie, partial truth, or a white lie. 

“Perception’s a tool that’s pointed on both ends,” Hannibal continued when all he received from the agent before him was a contemplative hum. He carefully chose his words as he stared off just past Agent Crawford. “This cannibal you have him getting to know… I think I can help good Will see his face.”

He internally smirked at his subtle, yet undetectable giveaway. This was proving to be the perfect way to the inner circle of avoiding suspicion while learning all he needed to know to make himself even further undetectable. He found himself quite enraptured and stimulated by the thought of the dark waltz he was to dance with the brilliant and fragile professor. He had no doubt the brunette could keep up with the tempo and match stride with himself. Hannibal felt his adrenaline and endorphins rising at the thrilling thought of being within an inch of being caught just to throw a wrench in the whole pattern and see if Will could still follow the blood red strings back to him. Being on the spectrum and leaning towards Asperger’s Syndrome, Hannibal had no doubts about his intelligence, but it was his persistence and tenacity that would be tested the most. The mother who was the first to say ‘don’t play with your food’ was certainly not a cannibal and had clearly not been privy to the enjoyment of dinner and a show. 

“ _In the name of love, I'll follow you. You fit me like a glove when I'm inside of you. And if my body's dead and cold, I'd die for you. In the name of love, I'll kill for- I'll kill for you…”_

“Shrike’s a perching bird,” Jimmy Price elaborated. “Impales mice and lizards on thorny branches and barbed wire. Rips their organs right out of their bodies. Puts them in a little birdie pantry and eats them later.”

It’s Jimmy Price’s description that knocks everything into place for Will. The design is more obvious than it was before… The killer is a cannibal. Whoever is killing these girls is killing for sport, seeing them as if they were cows or pigs and at least one type of organ to be consumed later was being harvested. But to what end? Was it a reverence for women with a twisted attempt to become one with them? Or was there some feature or something in their background that painted targets on their backs to be sought out and consumed? Was it possible that they were stumbling upon a cannibalistic Ted Bundy? The killer could be targeting this particular demographic out of a sort of lash out at a mentally scarring discovery… Bundy was known for stepping off the deep end after discovering that his supposed sister was actually his mother and targeting women who looked like her as a sort of (lamentable) cathartic exercise.

“This girl’s killer thought she was a pig,” Will emphasized as he described what kind of person would impale a victim on an altar made from a stag’s head.

“You think this was a copycat?” Jack clarified as he followed Will’s train of thought as he turned to find the man mid-storm off.

“The cannibal who killed Elise Nichols had a place to do it,” Will elaborated, turning back towards Jack as he gestures wildly at the scene before them. “and no interest in… in field kabuki! So, he has a house, or two, or a cabin… something with an antler room. He likely has a daughter. The same age as the other girls. Same- same hair color, same eye color, same height, same weight. She has to be an only child. She’s leaving home… He can’t stand the thought of losing her, even if losing her means that she no longer lives at home and is away at college. She’s his golden ticket.”

“What about the copycat?” Jack insisted once more when Will tried to flee again.

“You know, an intelligent psychopath, particularly a sadist, is very hard to catch,” Will finally responded, facing Jack but directing his gaze nearly everywhere else as much as possible. “There’s no traceable motive. There’ll be no patterns. He may never kill this way again.” Will huffed a laugh to himself- his agitation and subtle feeling of betrayal rearing up at Jack’s skepticism- as he added, “Have Dr. Lecter draw up a psychological profile. You seemed very impressed with his opinion.”

With that, Will stormed off the scene. Between Jack’s skepticism, the sickening realizations, and the gore he was forced to visually imbibe, Will was admittedly a mess. He was far from home, away from his dogs, and quite frankly pissed (and maybe a little hurt) that Jack was either having him profiled for sanity or ready to replace him after disrupting his peaceful and predictable schedule as a professor of the FBI’s Academy in Quantico. With exhaustion quickly weighing down on him, Will traveled back to his motel, locked the door, and took a well deserved scaldingly hot shower to try and wash away both the physical and emotional grime of the day. Maybe it was being raised in modern society or just his morals or his finicky stomach, but something about the killer not only murdering and displaying girls but consuming them- consuming humans in general- was particularly disturbing to him. At first when he got into the boiling hot water, Will was worried that there was no scrubbing away the discovery and all the gruesome thoughts that came with it, but the water and his favorite soaps did the trick to level his anxious thoughts. He found himself in a neutral territory as he dressed for bed in some rather simple pajama pants and a white tee before climbing into bed for the night. 

“ _Your eyes, they could cut through diamonds and steel. For real, they're sharper than the blade in your hand. They tell me you're strong, but they don't tell me what you feel. I feel there's something that you want me to hear. It's coming in loud and clear. You know what you want, what you want, what you want…”_

When Will woke to knocking on his motel door, he couldn’t escape the feeling that clung to him after being locked into a staredown with a shadowy stag in a dark forested area. That was some damn dream, or more accurately, nightmare. He struggled to rip himself out of bed to answer the door for whoever was there. Though, in his hazy sleep addled state, he had no real expectation of who he would find on the other side of the door, he found himself surprised- whether pleasantly or unpleasantly was still to be determined- at the sight of one Dr. Hannibal Lecter. What the fuck was he doing in Minnesota? Did Jack take his petty dig as an actual invitation? Regardless, why was Dr. Lecter paying a visit at the crack of dawn… Will couldn’t even tamp down the unamused and exhausted bitch face that rested on his features as the posh Lithuanian stood in his temporary doorway.

“Hello, Will. May I come in?” Hannibal greeted, careful to keep his tone and expression as neutral as possible despite the hint of a smile that quirked at the corners of his mouth at seeing the ruffled bedhead of the curly haired brunette. _Fragile, Endearing…_ _That’s two that now take priority in categorizing this delightful puzzle of a man,_ he thought to himself.

“Where’s Crawford?” Will questioned, searching the parking lot behind the psychiatrist for the agent in question.

“Deposed in court,” Hannibal simply answered, that quirk of a smile staying put but not quite becoming a full smile as he peered into the room as a subtle reminder of his earlier request. “The adventure will be yours and mine today. May I come in?”

Will looked him over, debating on whether he wanted to and whether it was a good idea to let Dr. Lecter into his room. After a moment, he stepped aside, eyes cast down, and allowed the older man into his room before ditching the opened door to part the curtains so they could see in the otherwise pitch black room.

“I’m very careful about what I put into my body,” Hannibal spoke up to break the silence as he closed the doors to the room with care. He moved towards the sun illuminated table with the bag that he packed with breakfast portions for each of them. “Which means I end up preparing most meals for myself. A little protein scramble to start the day. Some eggs, some sausage.”

Will accepted the offered serving and took a bite, finding the taste to be far preferable over his usual standards for breakfast. Still avoiding eye contact as much as possible he hummed, “Mm, it is delicious. Thank you.”

“My pleasure,” Hannibal submitted, mulling over his next words as he watched Will plate the food offered to him. He couldn’t help but wonder if Will was a picky eater and whether that was a circumstance of his mental diagnoses or a leftover byproduct of childhood. “I would apologize for my analytical ambush, but I know I will soon be apologizing again and you’ll tire of that eventually, so I have to consider using apologies sparingly.”

Hannibal wasn’t sure what it was about Will Graham, but he found himself drawn to the man. He felt the need to get on his good side and he wasn’t entirely sure it still had to do with the desire to toy with the pseudo FBI agent while continuing to draw suspicion away from himself. 

“Just keep it professional,” Will dismissed, not really wanting to have the discussion at hand and especially not before a strong cup of coffee.

“Or we could socialize like adults,” Hannibal casually suggested, once again unsure of his true motive. “God forbid we become friendly.”

“I don’t find you that interesting,” Will bluntly shut down, taking a sip of the offered caffeine. He wasn’t comfortable in social situations and he was having a hard time understanding how that hadn’t occurred to the psychiatrist across from him. 

“You will.” Hannibal promised. Something had certainly gotten into him today. He could only assume that his attraction to the intellectual before him was due to the thrill of potentially getting caught and the knowledge that he could easily evade if his deductions were correct thus far. “Agent Crawford tells me you have a knack for the monsters.”

Will found his appetite spoiled by the turn in conversation and sighed as he pushed the food aside. If Dr. Lecter wanted to discuss the case, then fine. Will came right out with it, “I don’t think the shrike killed that girl in the field.”

“The devil is in the details,” Hannibal turned a phrase, leaning forward to match Will’s intensity. He was ready to take notes for future ‘sporting events’ so as to ensure Will wouldn’t have an easy time catching him. Where was the fun in giving himself up when he had more to lose than Will had to gain from this game of cat and mouse. “What didn’t your copycat do to the girl in the field? What gave it away?”

“Everything,” Will declared with a precise hand gesture as his mind sprung into action and his anxiety began a slow burn. “It’s like he had to show me a negative so that I could see the positive. It… That crime scene was practically gift wrapped.”

“The mathematics of human behavior, all those ugly variables,” Hannibal noted, returning to his food. He drew some excitement and intrigue at Will’s vague commentary of the crime scene and carefully chose his words to encourage the man to elaborate on his thoughts. “Some bad math with this shrike fellow, huh? Are you reconstructing his fantasies? Heh? What kinds of problems does he have?”

“Uh, he has a few,” Will internally shuddered, taking another sip of his coffee. He wasn’t really in a place to revisit those thoughts, but he was also curious to see where Dr. Lecter was guiding this conversation. Was he going to share some possible insights or was he just curious? 

“You ever have any problems, Will?” Hannibal pressed, curious to see how Will would respond. That was the ultimate deciding factor in much of human life- curiosity, which may or may not have gotten the cat killed. 

Will placed a hand over his chest in mock offense as he gave a lazily shocked look to Dr. Lecter with a simple and false, “No.”

  
“Of course you don’t. You and I are just alike… Problem free. Nothing about us to feel horrible about,” Hannibal pointed out, starting to wonder who he was really trying to reassure as he watched Will eat the ‘sausage’ in the protein scramble. “You know, Will… I think Uncle Jack sees you as a fragile little teacup. The finest China, used only for special guests.”

Will got a chuckle out of that last bit. The observations and comparisons Dr. Lecter shared were certainly entertaining and he found himself asking with an amused smile, “How do you see me?”

“The mongoose I want under the house when the snakes slither by,” Hannibal answered with a dark inflection as he deadpanned. Will would be a most perfect ally as he would have the easiest plea of truly not knowing what was happening with the perfect mixture of mental diagnoses he possessed. To detract from the sentiment, he resumed his breakfast and encouraged Will to do the same. Once more, Will’s expression reminded him of the innocent confusion and uncertainty of a child still learning social nuances and ulterior meanings. _Fragile, Endearing, and, dare I say, Precious- like a preserved painting from a time long ago that everyone sees differently,_ Hannibal jotted in his mental file of Will Graham. _No one believes the accusations of a child and everyone is keen to protect one from harm. He’s the perfect culmination of traits._

Will felt a little queasy at Dr. Lecter’s chosen words and he knew the amusement disappeared from his face. What was that supposed to mean? Who were the snakes in Dr. Lecter’s mind? What was it about Will that made him equate to a mongoose? Will didn’t really want to think about what it was that made him the way Dr. Lecter saw him. It was certainly preferable to being a delicate teacup, but also concerning…

_“_ _In the name of love, I'll follow you. You fit me like a glove when I'm inside of you. And if my body's dead and cold, I'd die for you. In the name of love, I'll kill for…”_

While they were in the car pulling up to their best lead, Will caught Dr. Lecter’s smile from the corner of his eye and couldn’t stop himself from asking, “What are you smiling at?”

“Peeking behind the curtain,” Hannibal simply responded, trying to tone down his delight on finally getting answers to how the FBI conducts the investigations that could lead to his demise were he not brought into their secret circle. “I’m just curious how the FBI goes about its business when it’s not kicking in doors.”

“You’re lucky we’re not doing house-to-house interviews,” Will pointed out as his mind flitted through all his experiences with the FBI thus far. “We found a little piece of metal in Elise Nichols’ clothes, a shred from a pipe threader.” 

It was Hannibal’s turn to avoid eye contact as the realization struck him of how a tiny shred of something was enough to set them down the right path as he made his observation, “Must be hundreds of construction sites all over Minnesota.”

“A certain kind of metal, certain kind of pipe, certain kind of pipe coating,” Will narrated the discovery process with a sigh. “So we’re checking all the construction sites that use that kind of pipe.”

“What are we looking for?” Hannibal pressed, finally regaining his composure as he turned towards Will from his spot in the passenger seat. 

“At this stage, anything really,” Will shrugged, eyes scanning the construction site before them. He found himself subconsciously looking towards Dr. Lecter as he stated, “But, mostly anything peculiar.”

With that, they exited the car and went inside to see if they could gather more evidence or ideas of where to find the next missing piece. Will blocked out the annoying receptionist talking about him and Dr. Lecter as if they weren’t right next to her and capable of listening to her relay the situation. As he dug through the files, he finally found a peculiarity that was either innocuous or damning. There was a pipe threader by the name of Garrett Jacob Hobbs that not only was missing an address from his file, but also had a record of missing work multiple times for a few days at a time. Hobbs was probably their best bet since the particulate came from a pipe threader. To be safe, Will continued on with collecting the files he had separated into boxes in case they needed information or confirmations from their newest suspect’s coworkers. Dr. Lecter questioned his interest of Hobbs and why a missing address was so damning so Will took a moment to explain it as he asked the receptionist to see if there was any sort of address on file for the resigned employee in question. As they were packing the boxes of files into the back of Will’s car with the help of the loudmouth receptionist, their progress was halted by Dr. Lecter’s ‘accidental’ fumble in handing a box of files to the receptionist at the bottom of the stairs to the portable office. Will proceeded to clean up the splayed out files while the receptionist took the box to his trunk- neither noticing Dr. Lecter slipping back inside. Everything seemed to be falling into place as far as Will was concerned.

_“Sticks and stones break my bones, But bullet holes, you know they can't hurt me. Invincible, unbreakable, unstoppable. I'll show you who's worthy. You grab the gun, I'll take the wheel. Fuck the world, my love is real. Fuck the world, my love is real. Fuck the world, this love is real…”_

Hannibal, on the other hand, realized that if they managed to interview Hobbs and gain a confession at some point, they would realize there was another killer and sort out timing and evidence… He simply couldn’t allow it when he only just infiltrated the FBI and found his new favorite impressionable plaything. So he decided the only way to secure a prolonged backstage pass was to give the FBI a run for their money. What better way to do that than give the suspected killer a friendly heads up? Afterall, he already had the phone number for the suspect… All he had to do was give the man an anonymous call and that’s exactly what he did- with some precautions of course. He used a tissue to grab the phone, his knuckles (no fingerprints that way) to dial the number with the handy little ‘*67’ trick to ensure Caller ID could not state who the caller was, and give the vague warning of, “They know.”

Panic. Fear. Urgency. Instinct. Concern. Force. Control. Consider. Decide.

**Power.**

All of it rushed through Will in one of the most powerfully traumatizing and transforming experiences thus far. The moment they pulled up to the Hobbs’ residence Will felt something in the air that wasn’t right. Dr. Lecter was unreadable- perhaps he lost interest or maybe was hiding his fear of potentially being at a killer’s home? No, neither made sense with what he knew of Dr. Lecter thus far, but Will didn’t have time to puzzle out what was so odd about the man’s peaceful appearance. He headed for the front door, nearly stopping in his tracks as the suspect they had planned to interview threw his screaming, bloody wife out of the front door before shutting and locking it. Will remembered flashes of seeing his shaking hands trying to stop the blood while his vision darted around as his brain tried to figure out what was next. The daughter. The wife was already dead under his blood soaked hands. He couldn’t save her. But he could save the daughter if he acted right then. If he hadn’t known any better he would have thought he was having a grand mal seizure with how bad his whole body was shaking with stress and panic. He couldn’t breathe. It was like all the oxygen had been sucked from his lungs and the air around him. His brain moved at a pace even it couldn’t comprehend anymore. It was one fractured thought after another.

Door locked. Door not budging. Weapon. Weapon required. Holster. Gun. Grab Gun. Destroy door. Hobbs equals threat. Hobbs equals knife. Gun ready. Verbal warning. Threat placed. Eyes search. Feet move. Move slow. Caution always. Watch out. Hobbs spotted. Daughter threatened. Hands steadying. Hobbs panicked. Daughter terrified. Knife moving. Action required. Action REQUIRED. ACTION REQUIRED. AIM. SHOOT. STILL MOVING. SHOOT AGAIN. SHOOT AGAIN. BAD AIM. SHOOT AGAIN. SHOOT AGAIN. STILL OFF TARGET. HOBBS STANDING. SHOOT AGAIN. SHOOT AGAIN. ALMOST DOWN. STILL THREAT. SHOOT AGAIN. SHOOT AGAIN. Victory. Battle won. Hobbs dropped. Hobbs bleeding. Bleeding… Daughter bleeding. Daughter dying. Daughter gasping. Blood spilling. Pressure failing. Shaking hands. Seizure-like shaking. Denial. Blood not stopping. 

_See? See?_

Hobbs distracting. Vile smirk. Killer dead. Blood spilling. Daughter gasping. Not stopping. Denial. Lecter kneeling. Lecter intervening. Lecter aiding. Still shaking. Denial. Blood soaked. Dead body. Lecter. Outside... Commotion... Almost failed... Lecter prevented... Numb…? Empty…? Walls needed… Too close... Create distance... Ambulance leaving…?

“ _Shit's real, I need you to aim straight for my heart. And if you're gonna miss then hit my head and leave a permanent scar. You're fatal but I love who you are. Be my death or my forever, You're my little bloodfeather. Bloodfeather…”_

Will didn’t remember going back to the hotel. Didn’t remember driving. Certainly didn’t remember performing the motions done to make it into the shower. Numbness. Analyzation. Conflicting feelings about events unfolded… He almost failed the daughter… If Lecter hadn’t been there, she would’ve died because… Because he was too terrified to put pressure on the wound. Too scared of hurting her more. He couldn’t stop shaking. He wasn’t able to do what he had to, but Lecter was. Lecter… Hannibal Lecter… He still made Will uncomfortable and uncertain. Too many unknowns surrounding the psychiatrist… and yet, Will found some sort of feeling sprouting in him. It wasn’t desired, wasn’t expected, and certainly wasn’t clear what that feeling was. What he did know is that he needed to be there when the Hobbs girl awoke. She would need a friendly face, even if she didn’t consider his friendly. That was a whole other issue- whether she would see him as her rescuer or a murderer… Logic would dictate that she would determine him to be the former since her father was about to slit her throat, but depending on her reaction to the trauma of the unfolded events… She may not feel that way at first. It was highly likely he would be seen as a monster for shooting her father and preventing her from an end to her own story- her own confusion, pain, trauma… There was only one way to find out. He was going to the hospital.

Will walked through the sterile, quietly humming halls of the hospital to Abigail Hobbs’ room. There she lay in the hospital bed, intubated and unconscious, with Hannibal asleep by her side and loosely holding her hand. Dr. Lecter couldn’t be terrible if he had saved her and stayed by her side… Will took a seat and allowed himself to settle. He needed to rest and regroup so he could be there for Abigail when she woke. 

  
_“_ _In the name of love, I'll follow you. You fit me like a glove when I'm inside of you. And if my body's dead and cold, I'd die for you. In the name of love, I'll kill for…”-_ Highly Suspect, “Bloodfeather”


End file.
